For some crazy reason (probably because I am going crazy with all the extra time on my hands), I decided to try my hand at some nail art. I've been wanting to do a neon/nude manicure for a long time, inspired by this NB post. However, I have absolutely no freehand skills, so I knew I wanted to use the striping tape I finally bought with my last order of swatch sticks. I looked through some of my favorite nail art blogs, and found this post from The Nailasaurus. And, donc, you have this design, which I am pretty happy with despite its imperfections.

This is actually a fairly easy look to achieve, it just takes a bit of time. Before I went to bed, I did my neon base colors. These three polishes are all from China Glaze's Summer 2012 "Summer Neons" collection. The warm, shimmery pink is China Glaze in Love's a Beach. I used 3 thin coats and didn't have problems, although it dries to a matte finish fast, so you have to work quickly. The shimmery tangerine is China Glaze in Orange You Hot? I used 2 thin coats and 2 medium coats and didn't have any problems with the formula. The highlighter yellow shimmer is China Glaze in Sun-Kissed. It is not as green-leaning as other similar highlighter yellow neons, but it has a bit more than my pictures captured. I used 2 thin coats and 2 medium coats and didn't have any problems with the formula. I topped these base colors with a layer of Seche Vite and went to bed.

The next day, I laid down the striping tape in my design, working one finger at a time. The only trick to applying striping tape is to make sure it is conforming to the curve of your nails and press down at the edges of your nails so polish doesn't pool under the tape. Also, if you have a design where the tape overlaps, remember what order you placed the tape on your nail - I drew a rough sketch and numbered it for my thumb. Once I had the tape down, I applied a thick coat of polish over the whole nail. I used Rescue Beauty Lounge in Plié, a ballet slipper pink creme from the Fall/Winter 2008 collection, which straddles the line between pink and nude on me. Immediately after you apply your polish, you have to pull up the tape using tweezers; otherwise, the polish will start to dry and leave polish strings all over your design. Because I'm not great at this technique, I went back over the areas where Plié had smudged into my base colors with some remover. I used my favorite clean-up brush for fine detail work, the brush that comes with the Chanel Illusion d'Ombres and Zoya Remove, which is a mild acetone remover, so it doesn't eat through polish as quickly and lightly went over those spots where the lines didn't look clean. It was very easy to do this because the layer of Seche Vite over the neons acted as a barrier to keep my base colors from being picked up. I cleaned up around my cuticles with pure acetone and my Elf concealer brush, and then added a layer of Seche Vite to finish. You can see that on my ring finger there is some bubbling. This is because the horizontal lines caught the Seche Vite brush instead of allowing it to float across the surface of the nail and created bubbles. Next time I would go across that nail horizontally rather than vertically to prevent this.

It sure didn't turn out the way it would have for other bloggers that excel at nail art, but it looks awesome from a regular viewing distance! By the way, sorry, I didn't notice there was a hair on my thumb in some of these pictures. Also, I know the claw pose is awkward as hell, but the design looks a little pedestrian without the thumb!

Indirect natural light

Worn August 18 - 22, 2013.

Here are the base colors. I was pleasantly surprised at how color-accurate they turned out. The yellow has a bit more green in real life, but otherwise pretty spot-on!